Al Roker Gives Heath Update After Knee Replacement Surgery: ‘We’ll Just Play It by Ear Every Day’
Al Roker is on the road to recovery, as mentioned when the longtime weatherman made a virtual appearance on the Today show Monday morning to update viewers on his status after knee surgery.
“It’s Monday, I’m home from the hospital,” he told colleagues Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Craig Melvin, and Dylan Dreyer. “This one is a little more complicated because it’s what they call a revision; it was a replacement of a replacement, so they had to take stuff out, put stuff in, so it was a bit of a bear,” Roker, 68, told audiences. “So we’ve just been kind of hanging out. Chilling out, not doing anything — which I know, a lot of people find hard to believe, but in fact, that is the case.
He’s been able to catch up on some TV, which he also discussed. He’s been able to catch up on Mrs. Davis, The Mandalorian, and Poker Face, specifically, and spend time with his family, including his son Nick, home from college, and wife Deborah Roberts as she celebrates her book on teachers hitting New York Times Best Sellers.
“I was being wildly optimistic that we were going to go to one of our [favorite restaurants], Daniel, for Mother’s Day, which is kind of our tradition. But that was not realistic, so we ordered in some quiche and some stuff and just had a nice meal in the backyard here,” Roker told Today. “Which was nice, because it was a gorgeous day yesterday.”
Roker said he has “three days a week of physical rehab that’ll go on for a few months,” leaving his official return to the show up in the air. “I still don’t know, I’m hoping, maybe sometime in the next two weeks to be back,” Roker said. “We’ll just play it by ear every day. And that’s the thing. And yes, I know I’m not going to rush back before I have to.”
This surgery serves as Roker’s second knee replacement following the first in April 2022. The second was delayed when Roker was hospitalized for blood clots in his lungs and leg. After two months, he returned to Today in January 2023 with an emotional update, stating: “I had blood clots, which they think came up after I had COVID in September. And then I had this internal bleeding going on, I lost half my blood. They were trying to figure out where it was.”
Through surgery, his medical team discovered he had two bleeding ulcers. Doctors rerouted his colon, took out his gallbladder, and operated on his duodenum, part of the small intestine.
“I went into for one operation, I got four free,” joked Roker. “So I got that going for me.”
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